I'm Stumped

[LeftCleric]

Ok, I only download off of two trackers, Both are private. One of them has a mass amount of users..About 1.5 million, the other is rather small about 20,000 users.

My ISP is Rogers and i'm on the extreme high speed cable. My modem type is Motorola SB5101 SurfBoard..Apparently from what i have read on these forums it's garbage for BitTorrent sharing, But, I highly doubt rogers offers a better modem. I have considered switching ISP's to Bell..But they apparently have the same feelings about BitTorrent traffic as Rogers does.

What's got me stumped is that i have no problem downloading well seeded torrents off of either tracker i'm a member on. Sometimes i see speeds of up to almost 300kb/s on either one. I average around 150kb/s on well seeded torrents. When it comes to uploading, I have seen speeds of up to 70kb/s on the larger tracker..And it holds pretty steady for the most part. On the smaller tracker, I can't hold any kind of steady upload speed even if it's 3kb/s (which is the speed almost all the time). The user will connect to me, Then the speed will just slowly drop to zero, Then the user will reconnect like a minute later or something and it does the same thing. No consistency at all.

I know that the demand on the smaller tracker isn't of that on the larger tracker, So of course my upload speeds will be slower, But why users on the smaller tracker can't keep a steady connection when i'm uploading is what's frustrating, But on the larger tracker this problem doesn't exist.

Anybody else have this problem? Anybody know of a fix for it?

I have tried most of what has been posted here, And on other sites.

I guess i'll list my set-up since i'll most likely be asked about it.

I'm using utorrent 1.6

Speed Guide Settings are:

(Speed tests came back as D/l about 5500kb/s, U/l 700kb/s..If anybody could tell me if i have my connection speeds set properly..That would be great)

Connection Type is set to xx/384k

Upload Limit: 35kB/s

Upload Slots: 4

Connections (Per-Torrent): 80

Connections Global: 230

Max Active Torrents: 3

Max Active Downloads: 2

My port is forwarded properly through my router, Which is D-Link Dl-524.

I'm using port #32459 for utorrent.

Now for my Preferences set-up:

Randomize port is turned off

UPnP mapping is off

utorrent is an exception to windows firewall

Proxy Settings: None.

Bandwidth Limiting:

Global maximum upload rate (kB/s) 35

(ON) Alternate upload rate when not downloading (kB/s) 50

Global maximum download rate: Unlimited

Bittorrent Preferences set-up:

Number of Connections:

Listed Above.

Additional BitTorrent Features:

Enable DHT Network: Off

Enable DHT for new Torrents: Off

Ask tracker for scrape information: On

Enable peer exchange: On

IP/Hostname to report to tracker: Blank.

Protocol Encryption: Outgoing: Enabled & Incoming legacy connections is On.

As far as the advanced settings go..I changed the net max halfopen from 8 to 4

Peer lazy bitfield was already set to True.

I have downloaded that TCIP patch or whatever it's called and have installed it.

Well, Hopefully i covered everything..Any help/advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Switeck]

I would imagine it's like a firewalled condition:

1 firewalled ip can connect to 1 unfirewalled ip.

But a firewalled ip cannot connect to another firewalled ip.

So long as you're trying to upload/download with an ip that's not on a throttled ISP, things may be fine...but for hostile ISPs, speeds drop almost instantly to zero and connections often break the moment they're attempted.

That's the way it seems for me when I connect to almost any Pacific Rim Orient ISPs...other than maybe some in Japan and South Korea. Alot of the time, I'll be a seed connected to 5 peers and they SEEM to be trying to download from me but they seldom accept speeds faster than 3 KiloBYTES/sec and often disconnect without warning and sometimes don't reconnect for many minutes on end.

[LeftCleric]

Thanks for replying.

I've read a few posts on these forums about people disabling the firewall on their computer, I don't know if that would help in my siuation or not..That would leave my computer pretty wide open also wouldn't it?

Hate to be a bother..But is there any way i can check to see that my firewall isn't blocking incoming connections? Or is that what the forwarded port i have open is doing, Leaving a hole in my firewall for incoming connections? I'm running XP Pro SP2.

I even have problems uploading to people in Canada on this smaller tracker and the States.

On a tracker with 1.5 million users, I'm bound to be able to connect with good speeds up or down. But the smaller tracker has a pretty low user activity on it..I just want to make sure this problem isn't on my end.

Thanks.

[Switeck]

If you had multiple computers, you could try seeing if µTorrent could upload/download across your network. You could even connect one computer to the router's WAN ethernet connection while the other was on the LAN side, and see if it's the router blocking the connection that way.

Also too, many modems now have firewall features and even mini-routers built into them to block "unwanted" connections. These have to be configured too.

It's important to note that when we talk about disabling the firewall, we mean ONLY for the 1 incoming port µTorrent uses. Your computer should basically never be totally unfirewalled if you're connected to the internet. However even a router acts as a decent firewall due to the way NAT works. This is also why the incoming port µTorrent uses should be a high number one (over 5000, even over 50000), because the probability of any insecure program (like media player, internet explorer, outlook...or about anything else made by Microsoft who believes in enabled by default) listening on that same port is nearly nil for almost anything above port 1000.

Even a good software firewall cannot protect a computer from a user who opens any and all email attachments...and doesn't run any antivirus software.

I have no software firewall, but I have a router with only 1 incoming port forwarded. I've even set my router to block both incoming AND outgoing connections on a handful of ports due to the numerous vulnerabilities associated with them. My OS is patched quite a bit and I have disabled/removed potentially insecure portions. I'm far from perfectly secure, but I trade some security for freedom and power.

[silverfire]

Antivirus, firewalls, patches, antispyware, linux, and all the random crap that people use to protect themselves from spyware are all ineffective to the end that none of them prevent user error, which is the most common attack vector.

[domyue]

Switeck, which ports do you permanently block on your router due to general vulnerabilities associated with them??

Thanks

[Switeck]

I block these ports:

23-24

48

129-139

445

17300

[domyue]

Doesn't important programs or any windows service use those ports??

If I block them, will it cause any probs at all??

[Switeck]

VERY important windows service use those ports! That is precisely why I block them!

They are meant to be LAN-only traffic, such as drive sharing across a network. ...you probably don't want your neighbors able to browse your hard drives. :cool:

You can look up what those ports are regularly used for many places on the internet. If I ever find I need to use those ports through the internet I can always unblock them, but for regular web surfing and even µTorrent...I have NO need for those ports to be accessable.